What is the American Dream?
For some people, it may be a comfortable house with a white picket fence, a couple kids, a pet dog, and a barbecue with friends in the back yard on a warm summer evening. For others, fulfillment of the dream could mean creating a successful business and making a million dollars.
And for many people throughout our history, especially those who have lived under drastically different forms of government, the American Dream has simply been the ability to live in a country where they are free to talk about whatever they wish without being afraid that government thugs are going to burst through the door at any moment and haul them away to a concentration camp or threaten their family.
In its highest expression, the American Dream is an ideal of the Human Spirit. It is an ideal wherein each and every individual human being is offered the opportunity to reach his or her greatest potential. And its basis is embodied in what has become the most famous line of the founding document of the United States of America in the words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence
So, is the United States of America an “ideal” country? Has the “American Dream” been fulfilled? The answer is obvious: People are imperfect and the ideals that America claims as its foundation are far from being completely fulfilled. Our society has serious problems. Many of the freedoms that we would like to take for granted are too often overrun by an excessively authoritarian and insensitive government; all kinds of bigotry still exist in many corners of our society; and there are vast inequities in power between huge corporations, a government that is supposed to be “of the people,” and the average citizen.
Does this mean that the ideal does not exist? … that the vision is not real? … or that it is not important? … No, it does not.
By their nature, ideals exist independent of physical reality. And ideals are important even if they are not completely fulfilled. In fact, they are especially important when they seem to be far above the norm of society. They give us something to aspire toward. They serve as a model of what we should become even if we are in the midst of struggles on an entirely different level.
And, in the long run, ideals can be fulfilled. With the right effort, bit by bit, they can be fulfilled in society at large, even though the road toward them may seem long and arduous. But above all, the thing that is most important for each of us to realize is that each of us individually, through our own efforts, can become, in our own way, a fulfillment of the ideals of freedom, courage, love, and personal achievement in our own lives.